While spiral notebooks and loose leaf paper are still present in the classrooms, seventh-graders at Mentor’s Ridge Middle School don’t fret about a backpack or a disorganized Trapper Keeper eating a handout.
Instead, the students use school-owned iPads where most of their course work is accessible through education-specific applications or Google Drive, an online storage site for documents, files and pictures.
It’s all part of a new blended learning program that integrates technology into the classroom. Administrators say it gives teachers more opportunities to work one-on-one with students struggling on certain topics and allows students to work at their own pace.
Students say the digital platform appeals to them.
“These iPads and all these apps are making school so much more fun,” said Nick Molica, a seventh-grader at Ridge. “There are a bunch of apps that are really good for learning, like Schoology, Socrative and Khan Academy, which is math.”
Dasianae Byrse, also a seventh-grader at Ridge, said her favorite subject is English and she likes writing her stories in a document on Google Drive.
“It’s nice because if they pass out a worksheet and you lose the worksheet, you can go online and get it,” she said.
Walking through the halls of Ridge, it’s interesting to hear the conversations of small groups of students huddled around iPads, reviewing worksheets as teachers split their time among the groups.
Kaleigh Delsanter, another seventh-grader at Ridge, said in addition to having every homework assignment and classroom handout available on the iPad, the device also is equipped with several online application features and information books making it easier than toting a backpack full of textbooks.
“On Schoology, if you have a question for a test or something that’s due the next day, you can just email your teacher and it can be private or it can be viewed by all the students and they’ll get back to you,” she said. “They’re taking time out of time with their family, and they’re answering questions for us.”
Ridge Middle School Principal Megan Kinsey said the difference before the blended learning initiative was launched is marked.
“Probably one of the things our teachers will tell you is that students are engaged more in class with content. Part of that is the immediate feedback and part of it is the creativity they’ve been allowed,” she said. “It’s not just complete the worksheet and turn it in; it’s make a music video to show you’ve learned about the Revolutionary War. It just offers more variety to demonstrate their learning.”
Before testing the single-class pilot program last year, administrators went visited other school districts using blended learning programs, said Jeremy Shorr, director of educational technology at Mentor Schools. In some cases they found that, regardless of grade level or subject, kids just had their faces plastered to their devices.
“The learning became more about the technology and not the learning. That’s something we’re really focused on and are careful about here,” he said. “We’re rethinking the layout of how these concepts are taught. We want the teachers and students to have the appropriate tools to do it, and also the ability to really know when is the best time to use what tool.”
The technology is meant to support the learning, not be the learning, Shorr added.
“(The students) mentioned talking to their teachers at night on Schoology, which is great that they do that. To me the more exciting thing is that if we log on to Schoology on Saturday night at 9 or 10 o’clock when there’s a test on Monday, we see kids logging in and helping each other,” he said. “They log in and ask questions. It’s really something cool to see because they’ll spend hours on there quizzing each other and working through concepts.”
Before the iPads’ introduction, that didn’t happen on a Saturday night, Kinsey said.
Even with the technology, some students prefer to work with paper and pencil instead of submitting worksheets and assignments online, she said, which isn’t a problem because they want the program to fit the students, not the other way around.
“Students who need that little extra support, they get it in small groups with the teacher. Kids who are ready to move on can do it,” Kinsey said. “We’ve really tried to minimize whole group instruction — teaching the entire class the same thing, in the same way, at the same time — and looking more individually at students’ learning needs.”
Mentor Schools Superintendent Matt Miller said the district has started to reallocate some curriculum and textbook funds in a shift toward a more digital curriculum.
“School districts in Ohio have started to get money from the casinos that’s allocated specifically for education, and we’ve made the commitment to put that money into resources for digital curriculum,” he said. “It’s sort of money that we weren’t getting before, and we decided to earmark these additional dollars.”
Though early, it’s a commitment that appears to be paying off. The district and its teachers were recently awarded four #BestEdTech awards from the 2014 Ohio Educational Technology Conference, the third-largest educational technology conference in the nation.
The awards are: the Best Use of Blended Learning presented by a K-12 district; the Ed Leader Innovator Award for Shorr; the Teacher Innovator Award for Tracey Dunn, a kindergarten teacher with Mentor; and the Ohio Trendsetter Award for the schools’ Catalyst Program.
The Catalyst Program is a training opportunity for teachers from other Mentor schools to travel with their classes to Ridge Middle School to teach from a state-of-the-art classroom. Dunn was one of the first Mentor teachers who volunteered to try out the blended learning program on a younger demographic.
Shorr said the teachers and administrators are pleased with the honors. Schools and educators must be nominated by their peers for the OETC awards, which make receiving them more meaningful, he said.
“I am very proud for our staff, who have put in a lot of time and energy, to see them get this outside award,” Miller said. “I certainly appreciate all that they’ve done. To have someone acknowledge what our teachers have been working on really speaks volumes.”
Shorr and Miller said the plan is to gradually phase in the blended learning program throughout the district, starting with the middle school levels and proceeding from there.
“We see it as what’s best for the kids, and it helps us. Blended learning is not one thing, it’s a multitude of things,” Miller said. “Response has been great. As I’m hitting PTA meetings at all the buildings, the parents are really interested and they ask a lot of good questions.”

About the Author

Liz started working at The News-Herald in July 2012. She's covered municipalities, schools and now the night beat. She likes Doctor Who, baseball, ice hockey and cheeseburgers. Reach the author at elundblad@news-herald.com
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